Stab attack teenager loses appeal

A teenager who attacked a Stourbridge schoolgirl with a kitchen knife in front of her classmates has lost an appeal against his sentence.

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A teenager who attacked a Stourbridge schoolgirl with a kitchen knife in front of her classmates has lost an appeal against his sentence.

Chloe West, aged 14, was stabbed 20 times by 18-year-old Samuel Gayzer-Tomlinson as she walked to school.

He was sentenced to 13 years in a young offenders institution after pleading guilty to attempted murder and unlawful wounding at Wolverhampton Crown Court last year.

Gayzer-Tomlinson, of Turls Hill Road, Sedgley, challenged the sentence at the Court of Appeal yesterday but it was backed by three senior judges.

Mr Justice Langstaff told the court Gayzer-Tomlinson had struck up a friendship with Chloe after they met at a stables.

But when she lost interest, Gayzer-Tomlinson became angry and hatched a vicious plan for revenge, the court heard. He drove to Chloe's

Ridgewood High School in Wollaston, Stourbridge, and jumped out of his car before repeatedly stabbing her in the face, chest, neck and arms.

Schoolboy, Ben Hudson, tried to stop the attack and was wounded, before teachers and staff pulled the teen away, the court heard. Ben, then 16, was praised for his actions and nominated to carry the Olympic torch in Wolverhampton on June 30.

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Chloe was airlifted to hospital and needed 48 stitches to her wounds.

Sarah Buckingham, for Gayzer-Tomlinson, claimed the sentencing judge took insufficient account of the stress the teen was under after Chloe spurned his advances ahead of his A-levels.

She said if he had received mental health treatment, the stabbing might never have happened. But Mr Justice Langstaff, sitting with Lord Justice Davis and Mr Justice Burton ruled the sentence was correct.